This just had to be shared...

[Caz]

Incredible... 8)

Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, are the bright bluish stars from east to west (left to right) along the diagonal in this gorgeous cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie about 1,500 light-years away, born of Orion's well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have intriguing and some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the lower left. The famous Orion Nebula itself lies off the bottom of this star field that covers an impressive 4.4x3.5 degrees on the sky. The color picture was composited from digitized black and white photographic plates recorded through red and blue astronomical filters, with a computer synthesized green channel. The plates were taken using the Samuel Oschin Telescope, a wide-field survey instrument at Palomar Observatory, between 1987 and 1991.

Source: APOD

Click to enlarge

[geppetto]

Fabulous image :shock: 8)

Cheers Caz

[garymcgrory]

stunning!

Is that two satellite's on the bottom left or is that as a result of the image composition?

If only that was the view throu my dobber i don't think i would ever sleep again.

Gary

[Caz]

Is that two satellite's on the bottom left or is that as a result of the image composition?

I'm not sure, but someone is bound to know...

If only that was the view throu my dobber i don't think i would ever sleep again.

In a way, I'm glad those kind of views aren't possible through our modest scopes, these cloud covered skies would be even harder to bare.... :insects1:

[barkis]

Wow!, what a sight. Even though the Horsehead and gas clouds superbly prominent, It is the stars that do it for me in this glorious picture.

It is tantamount to a spritual experience.

Thanks Caz.

Barkis.

[Jamie]

Thanks Caz thats a corker.

[Kain]

Rog been at it again I see

Fantasic picture, hard to believe all those colours are up there.

Kain

[FLO]

Stunning 8)

[Jamie]

Stunning 8)

Similar in quality to the last couple you have posted Steve.

[radioactive]

Yes thats a superb image Caz in respect to the telescope I think it was the

The Samuel Oschin Telescope

Named after the late Los Angeles area business leader and philanthropist Samuel Oschin, this telescope is where the historical Palomar Observatory Sky Surveys were done, and where the Palomar-Quest survey is being conducted now.

The telescope is of the wide-field Schmidt camera design type, with the primary mirror diameter of 48 inches (thus it was formerly known as the "Palomar 48-inch Schmidt"). This gives it a wide field of view, around 9 degrees in diameter, which is about 18 times wider than the apparent size of the full moon.

Telescopes of this type are really good for wide-field surveying of the sky, from which one could select various interesting objects to follow up with the larger telescopes, such as the Palomar Hale 200-inch, the Keck 10-meter telescopes, or the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Such premier instruments are good to look deep, but over a much narrower field of view. For example, the area typically covered by the HST images is about 10,000 times smaller than the area covered by the Big Picture.

Thus, astronomers often use wide-area sky surveys like Palomar-Quest in combination with deeper observations of selected targets using larger telescopes, or observations on other wavelengths, such as radio, infra-red, x-ray, etc.

more about the Samuel Oschin Telescope here.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yxa6gj

[The Warthog]

Fabulous! If only you could see something like that through the ep!

[Astroman]

Is that two satellite's on the bottom left or is that as a result of the image composition?

Gary

Most likely, those are geosynchronus satellites. Palomar is similar in latitude to me in Phoenix, and each year about this time, geosynchs can be seen floating straight through M42. Either that, or processing artifacts.

[garymcgrory]

hi astroman,

Had the luck to spot 3 satellites crossing Pegasus in Nov when i was up in aviemore scanning the sky with my bino's, was really intrigued as the three satellites held their formation and made up a triangle, since found out that the us navy sent a number of thee multiple satellites up in the 90's called NOSS Satellites i think and they have been wrongly attributed as UFOs by many over the years- just goes to show that if you are looking for strange things in the sky to prove the existence of et then you will certainly find it!

Gary